How To Write About Your Kids Without Making Them Crazy(er)

March 1, 2017

How to Write About Your Kids? Try these easy steps so they won’t make this face.Photo via Visual hunt

HOW TO WRITE ABOUT YOUR KIDS is a classic dilemma for many memoir writers. It’s one of the questions I get asked all the time in my classes and personal memoir coaching. And since I have a kid, and I’ve written about her, I really do get how tricky it can be. I mean, you don’t want to make them crazy, right? I remember well the day my daughter told me I had to stop writing about her. It was hard, but I agreed. Kind of (you notice I’m writing about her now, right?). It may happen to you. You, too may be forbidden, so until then, let’s get writing about our kids, shall we?

I have four basic rules for writing about kids, and they run the gamut from what not to write about to what to remember to keep in mind all the time. In a nutshell, forget cutesy, anything adorable, or all-too-personal anecdotes. Those simply are too small.

Instead, think about those things that will resonate with your readers, which is never the cute, inside-baseball jokes of your own family, or the sigh-ing-ly adorable things your kid did. Instead, as in writing any piece of memoir, think about the universal.

What can you write about that others, after reading it, will either learn something, have something confirmed, or be pushed a little to think even more deeply about their own parenting?

How about some examples?

Want some examples? I’ve got them right here, each illustrating one of the four rules of writing about your kids.

Explore a quandary other parents have. For me, this was imaginary friends, after hearing one too many times that they were dangerous foils who your kid will use to blame for her bad behavior. I doubted it. Here’s why.

Great question, @Karen DeBonis–I recently wrote a post about a devastating breakup our son had when he was in his mid 20’s. He didn’t want his name used, but if anyone that know him read my post they would know, because I also used the tatto he got as a result as the featured image :).

About Me

BY WRITING AND TEACHING MEMOIR, I've learned that everyone has a story to tell. My most recent book is "The Memoir Project: A Thoroughly Non-Standardized Text on Writing & Life." (Grand Central). [Read More]

Deadline Calendar

March, 12 2017

Girl Scouts Founded

Were you a scout? It was on this day in 1912 that Juliette Low founded the Girl Scouts. Millions of us were scouts, including me and my sister. But we have wildly different memories of the troop. Why? Hint: Our mother was the scout leader. What to do with those varying versions of the same experience?

March, 20 2017

Vernal Equinox

On the Vernal Equinox, the Sun rises exactly in the east, travels through the sky for 12 hours and sets exactly in the west. On the Equinox this is the motion of the Sun through the sky for everyone on earth, with all of us together experiencing the same 12 hours of sunlight. Here in the northern hemisphere, let’s enjoy this first day of spring. How to make something that affects everyone in the Northern Hemisphere uniquely yours? Think in propinquities.

March, 27 2017

Cherry Blossom Festivals

On this day in 1912 some cherry trees got a very auspicious designation when then First Lady Helen Taft joined Viscountess Chinda, wife of the Japanese Ambassador to the United States, to plant two of the more than 3000 trees to be planted in Washington. It was the beginning of Washington’s famous Cherry Blossom Festival. Do you garden? Maybe this will inspire you.